Pete Earley

(8-19-16) One year ago today, Jamycheal Mitchell was found dead in a Virginia jail cell. Here is an Op Ed that I wrote for the USA Today newspaper this week about the state’s failure to explain what happened to him.)

How an ill man starved to death in jail: USA TODAY

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(8-17-16) INOVA Fairfax Hospital needs to stop hiding behind federal privacy laws and explain why it had security guards escort a 29 year-old man, who police said was in the throes of a mental health crisis, to a bus stop rather than helping him.

That still unidentified man was fatally shot on the hospital grounds Monday night after he began swinging a metal signpost over his head and charged at a sheriff’s deputy.

The deputy involved was immediately put on administrative leave pending an investigation. The local police chief immediately disclosed the shooting at a news conference and promised to make public a video from a hospital security camera that possibly recorded footage of the shooting.

Everyone promised transparency – except for one critical player: INOVA Fairfax Hospital.

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(8- 15-16) As a former newspaper reporter, I care deeply about the future of daily papers. I was fortunate enough to work at The Washington Post in the early 1980s under legendary editor Ben Bradlee when newspapers will still cash cows and reporters only had to write stories for the morning print edition, not file tweets, blog, and constantly update electronic versions on unprofitable news websites. John Oliver has taken a humorous yet frightening look at the status of newspapers today. His comments have caused considerable talk within journalism circles and inside the Washington beltway. I wanted to share it with you.

 

(8-11-16) If you live in Virginia, you might wish to attend a forum about mental illness and the death penalty being held August 15th, Monday, in Richmond. The Virginia chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Due Process Review Project is hosting it. I’ve been told there are a few seats still available.

NAMI VA. Executive Director Mira Signer is urging family members and persons with lived experience to  learn how they can support legislation that NAMI hopes to have introduced during the 2017 session that would exclude persons with severe mental illnesses from being put to death if their thinking was so impaired that they didn’t understand the consequences of their actions.

Dr. Richard Bonnie from the University of Virginia School of Law will be one of the speaker’s. Dr. Bonnie has been instrumental for more than two decades in helping Virginia’s elected leaders better understand mental illnesses. He has been pivotal in launching statewide reforms.

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(8-10-16) The office of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Monday cleared state Inspector General June W. Jennings and her top aide of any wrongdoing after a whistleblower complaint alleged that her office failed to thoroughly investigate the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, who died in a Virginia jail waiting for a hospital bed. McAuliffe’s chief of staff, Paul Reagan, dismissed the complaint without contacting or interviewing the three whistleblowers who filed it, including Cathy Hill, an employee in Jennings’ office. I thought it only fair to give Ms. Hill a forum to voice her concerns, especially after she recounted her personal struggle with Post Traumatic Stress to me caused by a sexual assault.)

My Story

By Cathy Hill

After approximately a 28 year-career in state service to persons with behavioral health and developmental disabilities, it saddens me to think I may not be able to complete my last few years with the Commonwealth of Virginia because the current leadership of the Office of the State Inspector General (OSIG) has actively undermined my ability to serve in good conscience.

The inadequate investigation into the death of Jamycheal Mitchell conducted by the OSIG Director of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, Priscilla Smith, and publicly supported by the State Inspector General, June Jennings, became the “last straw” for me and my colleagues, Ann White and William Thomas. The proclamation that the investigation was thorough and complete, coupled with other questionable practices, led the three of us to file a whistleblower complaint in July. After considerable discussion, we decided to share our thoughts and trust that our experiences and concerns provided in good faith, as established by law, would be investigated and a suitable judgment rendered so that the remedies necessary to correct the cited practices can occur.

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(8-9-16) Hours after the Virginia Governor’s office announced yesterday that it had cleared state Inspector general June W. Jennings in a whistle-blower complaint, new questions surfaced about her office’s investigation into the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a 24-year-old African American diagnosed with schizophrenia who died in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail last August waiting to be sent to Eastern State Hospital.

Travis Fain, a reporter at The Daily Press in Hampton Roads, reported that Jennings’ husband, William D. Jennings, is a manager at Eastern State Hospital, and Priscilla Smith, who oversaw the State Office of Inspector General probe into Mitchell’s death, had previously worked there as a senior manager.

Mitchell spent 101 days in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail waiting to be transferred to the hospital in Williamsburg. After his death, it was revealed that paperwork sent to hospital requesting that Mitchell be transferred there had been tossed into a drawer by a hospital employee and forgotten until after his body was discovered.

Although neither Jennings’ husband nor OSIG Supervisor Smith were directly involved in the hospital’s mishandling of Mitchell’s transfer request, Priscilla Smith’s supervision of the Mitchell investigation placed her in a position where she was investigating her past employer (Eastern State Hospital ) where the husband of her boss (June Jennings) is currently employed.

Reporter Fain wrote:

Requests for (interviews with) Priscilla Smith and June Jennings, made through the inspector general’s press office, were not granted, but spokeswoman Julie Grimes emailed a statement, saying William Jennings has been a career state employee and that his employment at Eastern State “does not represent any conflict of interest.”

G. Douglas Bevelacqua, a former inspector general for behavioral health, who has been critical of the office’s handling of the Mitchell case, disagreed in an email to me.

The fact June Jennings’s husband was the Director of Quality Management at Eastern State Hospital during the OSIG’s investigation of Jamycheal Mitchell’s death is a clear conflict of interest. Also, the fact that Pricilla Smith was his predecessor in that position at Eastern State Hospital until a few months before the system failed and Mitchell starved to death in jail because of “clerical errors” is another clear conflict of interest.

Questions about possible conflicts of interest are the latest in a barrage of troubling revelations swirling around Mitchell’s death. Click to continue…